SYLVIA KASHDAN monstrations and occupations; workers have rebelled, and continue to rebel, against their jobs and thelr unions through sabotage, wildcat strikes and other unauthorized actions; the black proletariat has rebelled against its conditions of existence in the slums as well as on the job; sex roles and the «holy family» have been attacked both within these struggles and separately. The goings on in Europe and the rest of the world have provided inspiration and food for thought. It is nevertheless true that these fragments have not yet coalessed into an active generalized revulsion and revolt against all hierarchies and suppressions - as was the case, for exarnple, in France in 1968. Since each new confrontation both builds on the heritage of the past and contains uniquely inventive elements appropriate to the given moment and location, I don't expect that we here will experience just what transpired in France - and that is, in the last analysis. for the best, since the revolt there has failed, for the time being at least. But given the vitality which has ernerged in the struggles wlthin the u.s. (apart from their ideological reductions), I think that there very well may be greater things to corne. Here in America we are acutely aware of the process of recuperation since it has been a highly visible aspect of our social life for at least the past forty years. Sorne have atternpted to explain it by charging that the proletariat has become «bourgeoisified». We are an shaped by the bourgeois social order. Everyone is effected. No one escapes its repression and distortion of human desire and character cornpletely; nor is there any specially prlviledged access to revolutionary wisdorn (as has been claimed) for any specific oppression group because of its degree of experienced oppression (blacks, wornen, students, intellectuals, etc.). But this, far from meaning that in shaping us in its own image capitalist society has created the keys to lts eternal life, contains both elements of its survival and of its destruction. The stability which it creates only continues as long as distorted human development remains «functional»; when that begins to break down under greater distortion (and it always does) we cannot avoid experiencing our own dehumanization and alienation, and it becomes a necessity to fight in order to live. The death knell of the present order will surely be sounded for better or for worse; nothing is forever. The potential and possibilities for a better life do exist. Ultimately, it is a question of concrete revoluttonary action. 22
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